Sequel to the enormously popular Native Tongue, The Judas Rose continues Elgin's gripping vision of a frightening, male-dominated world where the women of Earth are virtually enslaved. Once again, this group of women—and the nonviolent yet transformative power of language—is called upon to challenge Earth's violent, patriarchal order. Their revolutionary tool is Laadan—a secret women's language created to free them from men's control and make resistance possible for all women.

In The Judas Rose, the time has come to take Laadan from underground and spread its revolutionary power to women everywhere—in part, through a group of nuns inside the Roman Catholic Church. But when a handful of horrified priests uncover the women's sabotage they move to stamp it out with an undercover female agent of their own.

"Suzette Haden Elgin's Native Tongue trilogy, a classic text of angry feminism, is also an exemplary experiment in speculative fiction, deftly and implacably pursuing both a scientific hypothesis and an ideological hypothesis through all their social, moral, and emotional implications." —Ursula K. Le Guin, author of The Left Hand of Darkness

"Less well known than the The Handmaid's Tale but just as apocalyptic in their vision . . . Native Tongue along with its sequel The Judas Rose . . . record female tribulations in a world where . . . women have no public rights at all. Elgin's heroines do, however, have one set of weapons—words of their own." —Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, New York Times Book Review